Zimply Zakieh

Documentary: This two-part film, affetionate and comprehensive, explores the legacy of the great basketball star, who died last year at 88. He was a “regal being,” says the Los Angeles Lakers’ Jerry West-and an unwavering champion of civil rights. His own status as a Black player was irrelevant, Russell said: “It’s unimportant who was the first and who was the last. The important thing is how many.” (Launches Feb. 8)

Popping off into outer space

Animated: Sean and his sister Lisa (JeCobi Swain and Priah Ferguson) have had it up to here with their father (Laz Alonso)-he’s just never around. But he has a very good reason, as they find out when they hide themselves in the trunk of his car. He’s employed–and highly regarded–as an intergalactic bounty hunter. Teaming up with Dad to fight aliens turns out to be all the quality time the kids could want. Plus there are cupcakes (although the flavors may not be agreeable to a human palate). Both the animation and humor in this new series have a bold zip. (Launches Feb. 9)

Drama: As the public face of her own lifestyle, Jo (Noemie Merlant) is a queen of domestic serenity. Then she gives birth to Ruby, and life becomes a paranoid nightmare: Jo even fears that her butcher husband (Kit Harington) is using his knife for ritual infanticide. You could describe this as a horror film about postpartum depression-it’s full of shocks-but Merlant’s performance is clinical in its panicked realism. (On demand Feb. 3)

No more psychobabble! A therapist takes charge

Comedy: Widowed therapist Jamie (Jason Segal) doesn’t make much effort to hide his sadness and doubt from his patients–“I have resting dead-wife face,” he says–and he’s pretty much lost interest in listening to their problems. Then it occurs to him: Instead of yakking on and on as yet another session dibbles away, everyone should face the facts and do something. And so he tells Grace (Heidi Gardner) to just go ahead and abandon that unhappy relationship-and relocate to Vancouver. His mentor (a wry Harrison Ford) is appalled, but Jamie’s hopes suddenly revive. This is a loose, expansive, quietly funny show-not in the least bit shrink-wrapped. (New episodes post Fridays)

Apple TV+

Whether a life is ended or upended, broken hearts carry on

Drama: At age 12, Edward Adler (Colin O’Brien) has been blessed with a miracle that feels like a curse: He’s the sole survivor of a plane crash that killed his parents and a revered older brother, Jordan. Sent to live with his well-meaning but overwhelmed aunt Lacey (Orange is the New Black‘s Taylor Schilling), Edward becomes a freak celebrity, a talismanic touchstone for complete strangers. They want to share hsi luck, or karma, but they can’t see the memories haunting him–how that revered brother (Maxwell Jenkins) had been impatient with Edward’s tagging along. “We can’t just be together every single day for the rest of our lives”–that’s what Jordan said minutes before the crash. Edward is numbed by all this, too numb to cry.

That’s where you come in. An engrossing ensemble drama, Edward is the most eye-misting series since This is Us. Based on Ann Napolitano’s bestselling novel, it’s about more than sadly phenomenal boy. We follow the lives of other characters grieving for loved ones lost on that flight. It may be unfair to single out Connie Britton as Dee Dee, a well-off suburbanite who learns more than she’d like to know about her late husband and the ture state of their complacently pleasant marriage. But, well, she’s Connie Britton, of Friday Night Lights fame. She seemed perfectly at home on the chilly White Lotus, but her strength is her direct, unaffected warmth. When she offers a woman a ug, you want to shout, “Me first!” (First three episodes launch Feb. 3)